Insurance company bailout over Obamacare

...to the tune of ONE TRILLION dollars....

And the hits just keep coming...wonder if we should have "read it before we passed it?"

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/bailing-out-health-insurers-and-helping-obamacare_774167.html#

Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

Obamacare


For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.

We still aren't being given the real paid enrollee numbers. But even what we are seeing in the patient mix would cause the premiums to rise dramatically this summer. What I predict however will be a political govt intervention to mitigate those increases. The risk corridor (bailout) was there to prevent catastrophic loses by the ins corps... but it will be used instead to hide the real effects prior to the fall elections. Otherwise the premium increases would be a major issue and turn the election into an obamacare referendum.

Gawd we're dumb.

Ya know... Obama flat lied about the effects he clearly knew would result prior to the last election for politics... PERIOD.

And if what I have predicted takes place... it will be deceit upon deceit. Isn't there a point that even a supporter resists?

<crickets>

That's, like, you're opinion, man.  We need to just, like, get government out of the way and then watch the private sector just, like, give us efficient healthcare.  That is why, like, before Obama took over 1/6th of our entire economy at the barrel of a gun, like, we were getting healthcare for much much less of a cost than anywhere else in the world where the government is actually, like, even more involved...and stuff.  Then there's, like, Benghazi and, like, something about Fast and Furious, or some other stuff.  Government just needs to. like, get out of the way so we could be like that one place where they do, like, libertarian stuff, or whatever.  I don't know where it is but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.  I just, like, forgot what it's called, or something.  Most people don't know about it because they're all, like, statist sheeple who don't read stuff.  It was all in that one book by that one chick.

Like you must be stoned if you don't think healthcare didn't evolve into exactly what it was legislated to be.

I put together a better list than this on here that included union risk pools and the medicine controls... but this will do.

http://www.adn.com/2010/03/23/1195673/timeline-us-health-care-legislation.html

--1798: The Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen in 1798 marks the beginning of federal involvement in health care.

--1854: President Franklin Pierce vetoes a national mental health bill on the basis that it would be unconstitutional to regard health as anything but a private matter in which government should not become involved.

--1912: Former President Theodore Roosevelt campaigns as the Progressive Party candidate on a platform calling for a single national health service.

--1920: The Snyder Act of 1920 is the first federal legislation to deal with health care for Native Americans, setting up the beginnings of what became the Indian Health Service.

--1921: The Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921 (Sheppard-Towner Act) provides grants to states to plan maternal and child health services. The legislation serves as a prototype for federal grants-in-aid to the states in the area of health.

--1924: The Veterans Act of 1924 codifies and extends federal responsibilities for health care services to veterans, who receive aid if they are injured in the line of service.

--1932: The Committee on the Costs of Medical Care report is published and raises concerns about the costs of health care and the number of people lacking medical services.

--1935: The Social Security Act, providing pensions and other benefits to the elderly, is signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. National health insurance is left out of the final Social Security bill because of the opposition of organized medicine and its allies.

--1937: The Technical Committee on Medical Care, a group of federal agency representatives, is convened to advance health care reform.

--1938: A national health Conference proposes federal aid to the states to expand public health, maternal and children's services and hospital facilities.

--1939: The Wagner National Health Act of 1939, FDR's second push for national health insurance, fails as Southern Democrats align with Republicans to oppose government expansion.

--1943: The National War Labor Board declares employer contributions for health insurance to be tax free, which encourages companies to offer health-insurance packages to attract workers.

--1943: The Wagner-Murray-Dingell bill is introduced, calling for broad additions to the Social Security Act, including health insurance measures. The bill never came to a vote in Congress. A revised version was introduced in May 1945 but was never acted upon.

--1945: President Harry Truman recommends a national health insurance program during a special address to Congress. The McCarran-Fergurson Act of 1945 exempts the insurance industry from federal antitrust legislation

--1946: The National Health Policy Hospital Survey and Construction Act of 1946 provides grants to states to inventory and survey existing hospital and public health care facilities in each state and to plan for new ones.

--1948: Truman's National Health Insurance Initiative fails after the American Medical Association criticizes it, and some Republicans compare it to communism.

--1951: Truman creates, by executive order, the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation. The commission was to determine the nation's health requirements, both immediate and long-term, and to recommend courses of action to meet those needs.

--1952: Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower campaigns against national health insurance.

--1954: President Dwight Eisenhower, with the objective of enabling private insurance companies to broaden their coverage, proposes a plan of federal reinsurance for any private company as protection against heavy losses resulting from health insurance. After the first five years, the program would become self-financing with money derived from premiums paid by the insurance companies. The House soundly rejects the plan. Eisenhower calls a conference to try to salvage it and is told the Senate can't fit the plan into its agenda.

--1959: A bill is introduced by Rep. Aime J. Forand, D-R.I., to provide hospital, surgical and nursing home benefits for old-age and survivors insurance beneficiaries using the Social Security administrative mechanism. The program is to be financed by an increase in the Social Security tax. The bill fails.

--1960: Legislation is enacted establishing limited medical assistance for the aged through the Social Security program. The act also provides aid to the states to help "medically indigent" people 65 or older. Participation by states is optional; 25 take part.

--1962: President John F. Kennedy renews his 1961 request that the old-age, survivors and disability provisions of the Social Security Act be amended to provide health insurance protection for the aged.

--1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs into law the landmark federal health insurance programs known as Medicare and Medicaid.

--1971: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., offers his national health insurance plan. The "Health Security Act" calls for a universal single-player plan to be financed through payroll taxes. President Richard Nixon later advances his own version of a bill, the National Health Insurance Partnership Act. It would preserve private insurance but require businesses to provide coverage to employees or make payments to a government-run fund. It also endorses the concept of health maintenance organizations. The bill fails.

--1973: Legislation is enacted to encourage development of health maintenance organizations.

--1974: Nixon proposes his Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan calling for universal coverage, voluntary employer participation and a separate program for the working poor and the unemployed, replacing Medicaid. Organized labor lobbied successfully to kill the plan, hoping get a better deal after the next elections. That didn't happen.

--1977: The Health Care Financing Administration is created to manage Medicare and Medicaid separately from the Social Security Administration.

--1979: Sen. Kennedy proposes that private insurance plans compete for customers who would receive a card to use for hospital and physician's care. Employers would bear the bulk of the cost for their workers, with the government picking up costs for the poor. President Jimmy Carter's plan, released a month later, proposes that businesses provide a minimum package of benefits, that public coverage for the poor and aged be expanded and that a new public corporation created to sell coverage to everyone else. Neither proposal makes it through Congress.

--1985: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA), signed into law by President Ronald Reagan, mandates an insurance program giving some employees the ability to continue health insurance coverage from their workplace after leaving the job. In addition, hospice care is made a permanent part of Medicare and extended to states for Medicaid.

--1988: The Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act provides the largest expansion of benefits since the creation of the program and increases premiums. But act causes dissension, in part because long-term services are not covered and more affluent beneficiaries don't need the expanded coverage. The act is repealed before provisions go into effect. The McKinney Act is signed into law, providing health care to the homeless.

--1990: The Americans with Disabilities Act provides a broad range of protections for the disabled.

--1993: President Bill Clinton proposes the most ambitious reworking of the health care system since Medicare and Medicaid, aiming squarely for universal coverage. But he cannot persuade fellow Democrats in control of Congress to adopt it. The proposals drew strong opposition from the health care industry and employers. The Childhood Immunization Act supports the provision of vaccines for children eligible for Medicaid, children without health insurance, and Native American children.

--1996: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act improves continuity of health insurance coverage in group and individual markets for people who lose their job. The act also promotes medical savings accounts and improves access to long-term care services and coverage.

--1997: The State Children's Health Insurance Program is established to help provide medical care to children in low-income families that are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

--2003: President George W. Bush signs a law adding prescription drugs to Medicare.

--Jan. 19, 2010: Republican Scott Brown's upset in the Massachusetts Senate seat opened by Sen. Kennedy's death deprives Democrats of the 60 votes needed to move legislation forward. The effort to reconcile health overhaul bills passed by the House and Senate is stalled. --March 2010: Democratic leaders in Congress employ parliamentary maneuvers in hopes of enabling passage of Obama's plan with a simple majority in the Senate.

--March 21, 2010: On a 219-212 vote, House passes landmark legislation aimed at extending insurance to 32 million people and achieving nearly universal coverage.

--March 23, 2010: President Barack Obama signs the legislation into law.

PkrBum wrote:Like you must be stoned if you don't think healthcare didn't evolve into exactly what it was legislated to be.

Not at all, brah.  Not at all.  Sure, like, the statist sheeple show us stuff that says, like, we pay totally more than any other country in the world for healthcare, and that still is, like, only for a system that still leaves 16% of our population with no coverage.  Yeah, like, you and I get that.  Totally.  And, like, other countries have way more regulation and government involvement than we do, and, like, their healthcare costs are only fractions of what we pay in the US because their governments basically set prices for the industry, and shit.  That is why, like, an MRI costs $1,100 here but only $360 in France.  And it's, like, why an appendectomy costs $13,800 here and only $4700 in Switzerland.  And why, like, a bottle of Nexium costs $202 here but only $30 in the UK.  Yeah yeah yeah.  You and I get that.  We, like, totally see these factual observations.  We see that patterns, brah.  

But, like, if government would just, you know, get out of the way, and shit, brah, we know healthcare would get cheap, man.  It just would! Somehow. We just gotta have faith in the invisible hand, brah.  These statist sheeple in France, Switzerland, and the UK may get the same stuff we get for a fraction of the price, but, like, we got our freedom, brah.  We still got our freedom!

You still dodge the point of deceit that was used not only to "pass" the law... to disguise it's intent before the election... and what will now take place with the bailout to hide the true actuary costs. You won't take in the history that got us here obviously... so the present results probably mean very little either. Don't pretend to care... you will get the statist end you desire through any means necessary.

PkrBum wrote:You still dodge the point of deceit that was used not only to "pass" the law... to disguise it's intent before the election... and what will now take place with the bailout to hide the true actuary costs. You won't take in the history that got us here obviously... so the present results probably mean very little either. Don't pretend to care... you will get the statist end you desire through any means necessary.

Sure, brah, but come on.  You and I aren't here to, like, solve problems or think critically, and shit.  We're not here to offer any, like, solutions.  Because you and I both know what the solution is.

If government would just, like, get out of the way, and shit...shit just works itself out automatically, or something.  Only statist sheeple see problems and, like, try and solve them.  But you and I know that, like, uh, shit just works itself out automatically.  If we didn't have an EPA, there would, like, be no pollution.  If we didn't have an FDA, like, the big pharma companies would only give us save, cheap, and effective, like, drugs....and shit.  Same goes for the department of education.  Hell, get rid of that shit and maybe we would have less statist sheeple!  It all goes back to the evil state, brah.  Fight the power, brah!

You... on the other hand deserve every step the govt takes into and over your life. In fact you are a cheerleader.

You don't want to see the history... you don't want to know the process... you aren't interested in the actual results.

Why do you even follow politics? Just show up when told and vote as instructed. Livin tha life large eh comrade?

Da

PkrBum wrote:You... on the other hand deserve every step the govt takes into and over your life. In fact you are a cheerleader.

You don't want to see the history... you don't want to know the process... you aren't interested in the actual results.

Why do you even follow politics? Just show up when told and vote as instructed. Livin tha life large eh comrade?

Whoa whoa whoa, brah! Like, come on, man. I'm fightin the good fight just like you. I, like, want the freedom to be raped by the healthcare industry. Who is the government to, like, stand between a massive, multinational corporation and me, and then to tell that big thing that it can't price gouge me? They're taking my freedom to pay, like, outrageously inflated prices, and shit. Sure, everywhere else in the world that is, like, ran by statist sheeple pay fractions what I pay, but I still got my freedon, brah! And ain't nothing any statist can do to, like, take that from me!. It is, like, totally my right to be sold arsenic and told that it will cure my acne. That's, like, my freedom, man. And who is to say that, like, there should be any oversight into food production, and shit? They're taking my freedom to eat rancid meat! And just imagine how much smarter we would, like, be if we didn't have to go to school and shit, and if our level of education were like, correlated to our parent's income, or something. Sure, you and I know about upward mobility, and shit. But, come on. If a kid's education were, like, correlated with a parent's income, you and I both know the invisible hand comes in and just sorts that shit out on the spot. Only these mindless sheeple, like think, problems have to be solved and shit.

Hey, brah, I really enjoyed this chat, and shit, but yo I gots to make my way down to uni.  Got an ECON101 class that is about to start.  I, like, totally like telling the professor that he is just a mindless, statist sheeple, and shit.  Totally own that guy, like, every time. Then, I, like, school some hoes on Ayn Rand, and shit. That dood be making panties drop when I, like, sound all smart and shit.

It must be very irritating to have people question your ideology... you and obama both eh? Power to the ruling elite..!!

Wake me up when you nationalize the nation.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4590995?ir=Business

4/5 receive subsidy... less than 1/4 are young and healthy... and we still don't know paid enrollment. No worries eh?

Do you have any problem with a bailout to mitigate premium increases?

PkrBum wrote:Ya know... Obama flat lied about the effects he clearly knew would result prior to the last election for politics... PERIOD.

And if what I have predicted takes place... it will be deceit upon deceit. Isn't there a point that even a supporter resists?

What they're saying is that there is NOTHING President Barack Hussein Obama could do to which they would object.

boards of FL wrote:

PkrBum wrote:Like you must be stoned if you don't think healthcare didn't evolve into exactly what it was legislated to be.

Not at all, brah.  Not at all.  Sure, like, the statist sheeple show us stuff that says, like, we pay totally more than any other country in the world for healthcare, and that still is, like, only for a system that still leaves 16% of our population with no coverage.  Yeah, like, you and I get that.  Totally.  And, like, other countries have way more regulation and government involvement than we do, and, like, their healthcare costs are only fractions of what we pay in the US because their governments basically set prices for the industry, and shit.  That is why, like, an MRI costs $1,100 here but only $360 in France.  And it's, like, why an appendectomy costs $13,800 here and only $4700 in Switzerland.  And why, like, a bottle of Nexium costs $202 here but only $30 in the UK.  Yeah yeah yeah.  You and I get that.  We, like, totally see these factual observations.  We see that patterns, brah.  

But, like, if government would just, you know, get out of the way, and shit, brah, we know healthcare would get cheap, man.  It just would!  Somehow.  We just gotta have faith in the invisible hand, brah.  These statist sheeple in France, Switzerland, and the UK may get the same stuff we get for a fraction of the price, but, like, we got our freedom, brah.  We still got our freedom!

Please show us your link to a reliable source for your allegations.

"That's, like, you're opinion, man."

Markle wrote:

boards of FL wrote:

PkrBum wrote:Like you must be stoned if you don't think healthcare didn't evolve into exactly what it was legislated to be.

Not at all, brah.  Not at all.  Sure, like, the statist sheeple show us stuff that says, like, we pay totally more than any other country in the world for healthcare, and that still is, like, only for a system that still leaves 16% of our population with no coverage.  Yeah, like, you and I get that.  Totally.  And, like, other countries have way more regulation and government involvement than we do, and, like, their healthcare costs are only fractions of what we pay in the US because their governments basically set prices for the industry, and shit.  That is why, like, an MRI costs $1,100 here but only $360 in France.  And it's, like, why an appendectomy costs $13,800 here and only $4700 in Switzerland.  And why, like, a bottle of Nexium costs $202 here but only $30 in the UK.  Yeah yeah yeah.  You and I get that.  We, like, totally see these factual observations.  We see that patterns, brah.  

But, like, if government would just, you know, get out of the way, and shit, brah, we know healthcare would get cheap, man.  It just would!  Somehow.  We just gotta have faith in the invisible hand, brah.  These statist sheeple in France, Switzerland, and the UK may get the same stuff we get for a fraction of the price, but, like, we got our freedom, brah.  We still got our freedom!

Please show us your link to a reliable source for your allegations.

"That's, like, you're opinion, man."

Are you really asking for proof that medical procedures cost considerably more here than they do everywhere else in the world?  Is this really a foreign concept to you?

I pulled those numbers from an article I read the other day:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/01/13/what-liberals-get-wrong-about-single-payer/

The above article also references this article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/2011/08/25/gIQAVHztoR_blog.html

The above article references this study:

http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/22/3/89.full.html


But beyond that, if you have ever watched the news, or if you have ever read any sort of news sources over the course of your lifetime, I'm fairly sure you have been exposed to this idea before.